I think I like this place. After all, there aren't that many PM forums around where folks are actually respectful and have civil discourse over what we all know to be a very contentious topic: PM's.

That said, I believe PMBug has the right idea.

When the plant starts to grow, if properly moderated, it can grow to be one of the most respected boards out there. It just takes a little time, patience, love and attention. I have both lurked and posted. I try to read everything [for now anyway] to get the full flavor of the boards and her members. So far, I feel right at home.

Although this site, in it's nascent form, is well constructed and well behaved, we should be aware of what has happened at other sites, and not permit the same mistakes to be made [SSF anyone?].

I for one, will PM the 'Bug if I see someone getting stupid, or launching nonsensical personal attacks, and I hope others will as well. While I am not interested in participating in a "police state" website, I don't want to see the same things happen here that most of us witnessed on SilverSeek.

I fully believe in lively discussion and hard core jousting, so long as it does not become personal. I am not offended by F-bombs or any other colorful adjectives, as I am prone to using them as descriptives myself.

Anyway, that's all I have to rant about for now.

Wait, one more thing. The "Boss" made a killer chicken/ham/cheese spiced meat roll last night, I put it down with four bottles of Asahi and.......it rocked.

OK, now I'm done.

__________________ All things being equal, the simplest answer is quite often the correct answer - Occam

I think I like this place. After all, there aren't that many PM forums around where folks are actually respectful and have civil discourse over what we all know to be a very contentious topic

Thanks! I didn't think the forum guidelines were unreasonable or difficult. As long as folks abide*, the forum should maintain a friendly, respectful tenor even if people have different points of view.

*

Originally Posted by ancona:

... we should be aware of what has happened at other sites, and not permit the same mistakes to be made [SSF anyone?].

... I don't want to see the same things happen here that most of us witnessed on SilverSeek.

I'm not familiar with this story / history. What happened?

I joined the SSF recently (like a month ago or so) and have checked in infrequently, but stopped a while back after I realized that their forum has been infected with an iframe injection attack and intermittently trying to transmit viruses / trojans. I tried contacting an admin / webmaster about it but never got any feedback. Last I checked, the iframe injection is still there.

__________________ The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. - Lao Tzu

I agree all the way. I can take some jousting, but ad hominem attacks are very rarely justified, and we're not seeing it here, even for guys like me who aren't perhaps fully "bugs" in the sense that I look at and trade other things too, and have experienced PM's going down as well as up, and gasp, made money shorting them now and again (I killed both sides of that silver ramp and dump awhile back; some was luck, of course) - absolutely verboten behavior that will get you kicked out of a lot of PM discussions - on fire.

The site is helpful - I could point to the reviews of dealers for just one example, rather than keeping such information close and telling newbs to work it out for themselves, because you can't be cool if you don't know it already. And it seems like we have a good number of actual good people here, not a bunch of whack jobs glorying in doom and hoping for the end of things as we know them just because they think they're more ready than some for it.

They might not actually be as ready for bad times as some of us here who look at the whole spectrum. Joke's on them, perhaps.

Just hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst - just in case, or BSTS. Much more sanity than I see most other places.

I do also enjoy the atmosphere at "The Bug", as it seems to have a nice start so far with members that gladly provide useful info and share experiences without having a chip on their shoulder, or without having "something to prove" or without a smart-alec attitude. This type of atmosphere is easy to enjoy and is welcoming for metals noobs to ask even the most basic of questions.

Nice work so far PMBug.

By the way PMBug, maybe sometime we would like to hear a bit of your background if you are willing, and maybe what led to you to start this site (please accept my apologies if this is already posted elsewhere).

...
By the way PMBug, maybe sometime we would like to hear a bit of your background if you are willing, and maybe what led to you to start this site (please accept my apologies if this is already posted elsewhere).

PMBug,
The SilverSeek story is all too common, and in it's basic form, nearly universal to forums with only one mod or so that allow things to spiral out of control. There were several posters who consistently bombed threads with bullshit, black-jacking anyone who dared challenge their demented viewpoints. First there was "Roger" who was an outright asshole and thread assassin. We banded together and pummeled the mods with request after request to rid the site of this jerk, but to no avail. Then there was "Dunneyman" who was worse than Roger. After them came JoJo Jaro, a religious prosletetic nut-job who recently created a thread talking about the ark he was building, and he was actually quite serious about it.

The place went straight down the tubes over the course of a year. Many of us went to another site, created by a dedicated stacker and generally good guy. We started out like this site with a core group of about fifteen like-minded folks. We are now a sizable group and have twelve or so moderators, of whom I am one, to "keep the carpet clean" so to speak.

Just as it was in the beginning g at this other place, it seems to be here' very well mannered, on-topic and friendly. I like the whole family atmosphere and hope it stays that way.

__________________ All things being equal, the simplest answer is quite often the correct answer - Occam

I'll echo everyone's sentiments on how nicely this board is developing. It is great to have a place to discuss these topics without loads of nonsense, personal attacks, and pissing contests. It seems many forums always have some who have to prove that they are more hardcore (on whatever topic) than everyone else, but here, we share ideas and knowledge to help each other out.

I run my own forums (not on this topic, which is why I'm here), and I have a potential tip for this place.

We created a forum on mine, analogous to STS here, with one additional feature. It auto-deletes threads after a period of no new posts on them. While any normal moderation is subject to consensus of the mods, for this, we let them move any post or whole topic to the water-cooler thread and leave a note behind if they choose.

There are "no holds barred" on the water-cooler forum. Lets people talk trash, blow off steam, and so on, and they all auto-magically disappear after awhile when people lose interest. This makes it far easier to get people to accept much more restrictive rules elsewhere...and if something good develops over there, a mod can just make it sticky. Trolls get tired of getting shoved off good threads and give up - or after consensus, we boot them and the IP range they rode in on, along with their entire posting history.

I probably have fewer issues on mine due to our quite restrictive entry barriers, which are basically I have to like you already, and know who you are, and you have to ask - to prove you're a human and not a troll. This works on my site with is mostly for scientists but isn't as workable for places like this.

However, I've also got a forum for general trading and philosphy that isn't getting hit by many other than myself, which isn't how I like things. Any traders here who want to talk trash over there (well, hopefully it's not trash) are invited. I need a name and an email to set you up, you can pm me from here if you want in over there.
We like real names, which might hinder some, but since we don't talk about things other than trading philosophy, it might not be as important to retain anonymity there as it might be other places. FWIW, here's a link to that part of my own world.http://www.coultersmithing.com/forum...forum.php?f=51